Douglas Carswell

Douglas Carswell was first elected to Parliament in 2005 by a slender 920 votes. He was returned as MP for Clacton in 2010 with a 12,000 majority. He is the author of The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy and believes that the internet is making the world a vastly better place.

Brits are being carted off to face trial in foreign courts. Time to scrap the European Arrest Warrant

Essex police arrived out of the blue. They knocked on my constituent’s door, asked him to confirm his identify, before taking him down to the police station under arrest. After a brief court appearance, he was given conditional bail and then tagged.

Why? A French court had issued a European Arrest Warrant, alleging that my constituent had been responsible for tax evasion in France.

My constituent, let’s call him Mr Essex, is adamant that he has never been in trouble with the law. Not even a parking ticket, apparently. A local salesman, he is just a normal bloke, living a blameless life in our corner of England, he tells me. He is, he insists, a victim of identity theft.

When a French court first issued my constituent with a court summons, he got straight on to HM Revenue and Customs. Not to worry, HMRC apparently told him. We’ll advise the French authorities accordingly. Except HMRC did no such thing. Next Mr Essex heard he had been tried by the French court in his absence.

When the European Arrest Warrant was first debated in Parliament, we were told it was needed to fight terrorism. It was vital to tackle serious organised crime, they said.

It would not, we were told, be used to cart off innocent Brits to face trial in a foreign court. That’s not how Mr Essex sees things.

If we did not have a European Arrest Warrant, Mr Essex would have had the chance to point out a few basic facts in front of a British court. Like the fact he did not have a passport at the time of the alleged crime, so could not have been in France. Or like the fact that he has only ever set foot in France once before, on a day trip to Calais.

It is not for me to judge this case, but what I do know is that if we did not have a European Arrest Warrant, Mr Essex might at least have the chance try to establish these facts before being extradited.

You know what I find really shocking about this case?

When I raised it with the minister responsible I got the brush-off. There are lots of safeguards, came back a formulaic response. “I cannot comment on the merits of judicial decisions made by the French courts,” the minister explained.

Nor me, minister. So why are you happy to subject Mr Essex to the jurisdiction of a French court without the need to establish one or two basic facts before a British one?

Following last week’s Euro elections, ministers tell us that things will be different. Things are going to change, they insist.

Really? How will things be different for Mr Essex? Are you going to scrap the European Arrest Warrant, or keep on opting in to ever more pan-EU rules of justice? Over to you, minister.